Published January 17, 2001

My earliest memory of gambling is wondering what a group of older boys, squatting in a circle, were so noisily excited about as they tossed two of those big one-centavo copper coins (Remember those?) and then raking in the silver coins with a cry. Cara-y-cruz I think is what they called it. Also buntayog (in Ilocano). The rules were simple as I recall. Come up with a pair of heads or tails first and you win. The game was played anywhere, but usually in some dusty street corner from which it was easy to scoop up the coins and then scamper away from some police or truant officer.

Later on, I would come across other boys, often not even into their teens, playing "lucky nine" with dog-eared and fraying flash cards that came stuck to chewing gum sheets two-by-three inches flat. Those tag board cards had serial numbers printed in their corners, the last digits added and the two or three-card holder with the last digit number nearest to nine taking the bets. There were other rules, but enough to say it was just another example of youthful invention.

In high school, seatmates could play the same "lucky nine" by flipping textbook pages. This, of course, was more often a game of muscle memory and thus ended, many times, in after-school fisticuffs. The thing is that there was no end to youthful improvisation. The itch to gamble and bet always had its outlet. Fighting spiders, broomsticks racing on sidewalk gutters, set shots on the basketball court, etc., all were wagered on.

Later on, in college, gambling paraphernalia included the real things, including playing card decks, dice, slot machines, ping-pong balls and what have you. I even got introduced to those hole-in-the-wall, but heavily armored gambling dens in the city's then seedy districts. Everyone seemed to have a game going somewhere. Even jeepney drivers waiting for their turn at pasada could have something on deck, courtesy of the nearby watermelon seed vendor. If not that, it would be housewives stirring those mahjong tiles, or the neighborhood idlers busy at "Chinese poker" or some other card game.

Was it any wonder then that when casinos were legalized, the city's inveterate gamblers seized on the gaming house, glamorized by their location in five-star hotels, to sneak out of the proverbial shadows and find respectability in swankier locations. Besides, was it not the rule that only the supposed wealthy could play the tables and hobnob with the tourists, the latter presumed to have the green bucks to throw away?

There was also an income tax form that had to be presented for qualification, and a dress code to abide by. Naturally, those and other regulations were quickly shucked like so many losing chips as the government realized the tourists were sincerely more interested in the sights and natives of the country and that, reality setting in, it was the Filipino gambler, whose pocket was the fetching well. Never mind how that pocket was filled or refilled.

The state had stumbled (I maintain that is the right word) on the Philippine Deep of untapped monies. What the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and all of those ineffectual tax offices could not do by way of clawing out hidden wealth, the casinos did easily. That, and even with a smile from the happy bettors (victims?).

No surprise, then, that it was a quick two-step as the government, gluttony whetted, proposed to tap into that reservoir of gambling addiction. Two-ball bingo was the result. That was nothing but jueteng by another name, of course; but it at least put the "illegal numbers game" under a sanitized label.

Never mind that it was clumsily conceived, or that it was put half-baked on the gaming board. The national government had its grubby agenda to pursue and their local counterparts were itching to share in the profits. Nationwide polls were on schedule and campaign funds needed to be sourced. Did other concerns matter?

Perhaps none. Except that a bungled arrest of one governor from the Ilocos derailed it all.

And that is where my growing up in this "culture of gambling" has all led up to. The current picture is not a pleasant one to look at now. Thirty and some more years ago, the local betting scene (on games of chance or skill, neither of which I really understand in their supposed distinctions) was a source of real interest and amusement.

These days, that so-called culture has involved us all in a lowering mood. Innocence and naiveté have given way to a conviction that perhaps we should reconsider our propensity to gamble.

We indulged in that about three years ago. There he was, the poor man's steed, running for and then winning the country's biggest sweepstakes. Unfortunately, the gallop has turned into a limp and a stumble. And all because the formerly-perceived thoroughbred looks more that he has bet more on himself and his holders, rather than on the cheering and hopeful punters with their sweat-stained and, now crumpled, humble chits.

So now, we have been reduced to a nation desperately betting on that same horse, no thoroughbred he, to make it past the second corner. His trainers and handlers continue to whip him along, his mares doing their best by him along the rails or shores away. Sadly, he is the only one in the running. It is no race, truth to be told, only a tragic limp to a tape. Others see it as a final attempt to carry the spent swayback over the line even as the crowd dumps the tickets and make for the exits.

I've not seen enough. That much is clear from the couch I am stuck in. Heroism is still for me to see in how the horse's nose is brought across the proverbial finish line, dead or alive or barely so.

Such has been a life of growing up in a culture of gambling that the noisy wagering still hypnotizes. In this year of a little decade into life, I still wonder how the betting will go.

Pardon this spectator, but are there bets on the table? I'll make a bet: A horse, if not actually unconditionally lame, will be carried through.

On the other hand, as those boys who groom and then abide by their wards, might ask: They shoot horses, don't they?

At an age, I'm willing to bet.